Effort is a step toward strengthening the evidence base for employer adoption of paid leave

SEATTLE, June 6, 2018 - Today Panorama announced a partnership with Nestlé, Union Square Hospitality Group, Limeade, Burton Snowboards, Busboys and Poets, and TCG, among others, to further the adoption of paid leave by U.S. employers. The Paid Leave Pledge, which launched today, galvanizes leading business voices on paid leave around a commitment to share data on the impact of their paid family and medical leave (PFML) programs and calls on others to join. The effort has gained endorsement from former Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Labor, Chris Lu, who acts as an advisor, and JUST Capital, who provides support for data collection analysis.

“We are excited to partner with industry leaders on this important work, and are calling on other employers who track the impact of their policies to share what they have learned,” said Kimble Snyder, Director at Panorama. “By collectively building the evidence base, businesses can ensure that more Americans have access to the resources that help them thrive both at work and at home.”

For Nestle, the pledge reinforces the company’s efforts to implement a range of parental workplace support policies launched in 2016 and designed to improve health and wellbeing outcomes for families. In addition to a broad network of parenthood support resources, Nestle offers primary caregivers up to 14 weeks of paid leave and an additional 12 weeks of unpaid leave following the birth or adoption of a newborn child.

This founding cohort of business leaders has carefully considered how they can improve the quality of life for their employees and their families through internal, worker-centric policies. Over the next three months, Panorama will be reaching out to companies, businesses large and small, across a range of industries to gain additional commitments, with the forthcoming round of adopters slated for announcement in September 2018. Throughout a yearlong cycle, the consortium of businesses will share strategies and best practices, leading to the release of data impacts in summer of 2019.

“Through our work with the private sector at the Department of Labor, we repeatedly heard from businesses that the hardest thing was not having strong data on the impact of PFML policies,” said Lu. “Ultimately, there is a gap in data and this initiative is an important step toward addressing it.”

Tracking the results of paid leave requires flexibility, given the specific needs of each business, but there are some broad areas of impact that apply to businesses universally. In conjunction with the pledge, Panorama is developing a return-on-investment framework to provide employers with a comprehensive model of costs and benefits relating to a paid family and medical leave policy. Starting with a flexible approach is a recognition that, while not all business models are the same, there is value in better understanding the specific needs across industry sectors to protect both the wellbeing of workers and the sustainability of business.

“We’ve seen encouraging data thus far that suggest robust paid leave programs can lead to positive health outcomes and foster a more committed workforce,” said Judy Cascapera, Chief People Officer at Nestlé USA. “There is true power in this data and we hope to encourage other likeminded companies to share their analytics and learnings as we collectively work across industries to build even stronger programs for employees and their families.”

The pledge is a great opportunity for companies to better understand how to make workplace flexibilities work, and for those leading the way on these models to inspire others. Panorama serves as a trusted ally for businesses looking to expand or launch paid family and medical leave programs through its work on The Paid Leave Project. Access resources for businesses, learn how to participate in the paid leave conversation, and join future events at www.uspaidleave.org  

Effort will strengthen business case for voluntary employer adoption of paid leave

SEATTLE, April 9, 2018 – The Paid Leave Project, with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, will study how employers monitor the impact and track the outcomes of their paid leave programs. Encouraging employers to share their data externally, and supporting them in doing so, will help build evidence to address one of the largest concerns around paid leave adoption—cost.

Today, there is no standard approach to calculating the business value, health impacts, or general return on investment of paid leave. In the absence of a national policy, paid leave is a benefit some companies choose to offer. Employers looking to build a business case need data to understand the investment and impact. The Paid Leave Project is helping by developing measurement guidelines, sharing best practices and amplifying the voices of businesses.

“The next wave of employers looking to voluntarily offer paid leave want data,” said Angela Romei, director of The Paid Leave Project. “We believe that encouraging and supporting those who already offer paid leave to share their data and business results externally will reduce overall fear around costs and barriers to adoption.”

Tracking the results of paid leave requires flexibility, given the specific needs of each business, but there are consistent metrics and costs that will apply universally. To start, The Paid Leave Project is focusing on three areas: cost, business results, and health outcomes. Within these areas, success measurements include employee attraction, retention, engagement, morale, and changes in infant and parent health.

Tracking data is still the missing link in understanding the true impact of paid family and medical leave. Faced with a changing workforce, employers in every sector are exploring the impact of benefits like paid leave to productivity and their bottom lines.

Established in 2016 by Panorama, The Paid Leave Project works with employers to demonstrate the business case for paid leave by sharing research and resources. The team engaged with more than 470 large employers in 2017 to learn their paid leave stories and published a report on the findings. It was through this initial work with large employers that the need for measurement, or the return on investment, of paid leave was raised.

As I head to the WorkHuman conference in Austin, I find my mind drifting to my time in the technology industry. As a Seattleite, it’s likely not a surprise to know that before I joined the paid leave team at Panorama, I worked in tech. It’s been interesting to learn just how influential the tech sector is on the national conversation around paid leave.

Media coverage of tech companies coming out with new or expanded paid leave offerings is frequent, with the industry leading the so-called “parental leave arms race.” The tech sector has sizeable profit margins and steep competition for talent, so it follows that employers are finding innovative ways of differentiating themselves from their competitors (or matching their competitors’ offerings).

What you don’t see in the news is how this race is having ripple effects far beyond the confines of tech. Through our work on The Paid Leave Project my team and I have had in-depth conversations with large employers on the topic of paid leave, and the influence of the tech industry has come up again and again. In addition to competition for tech talent, employers find themselves vying for non-tech talent when they’re in close vicinity to a tech company. Agnostic to sector, workers are heavily influenced by the media coverage on tech’s paid leave programs, and benefits overall. People across the country are talking about the industry’s generous policies in employee groups, millennial fathers are forwarding these announcements to human resources, and unions are using this information in their negotiations.

Tech’s outsized influence is indisputable.

As I look through the conference agenda, I see an abundance of speakers and thought leaders from the tech sector. Hosted by Globoforce (tech!), WorkHuman is focused on the next generation of HR, working with businesses who thrive by bringing humanity to the employee experience. While paid leave is clearly in this vein, I was surprised to see that paid leave is not a topic of discussion here.

We believe the tech sector still has an important role to play by sharing the results, outcomes, and impacts they have seen because of offering paid leave. When Google increased paid leave to 18 weeks, the rate of new mothers leaving dropped by 50%. SAP shared that paid leave drives an increase in employee engagement, and every one percent increase in employee engagement equals a $75 million increase in net operating profits.

We’re excited to see other organizations here at WorkHuman that are leading the way with paid leave benefits, including Twitter, Intel, and LinkedIn. We hope they will also lead the way as the national conversation on paid leave evolves; by sharing information that will build the business case, they can affect more widespread adoption of this benefit and ultimately increase access for more U.S. workers.

Research from The Paid Leave Project Identifies Factors Behind Adoption in U.S. Private Sector

SEATTLE, March 1, 2018 – Competitive pressure, millennial workforce expectations, and the outsized influence of the technology industry are among factors impacting voluntary adoption of paid family and medical leave programs in the U.S. private sector, according to new research by The Paid Leave Project.

The year-long project gathered information from more than 470 large U.S. employers across 23 industries to identify which factors impact a company’s decision to voluntarily offer paid family and medical leave.

“The need for paid leave programs is already part of our national conversation,” said Angela Romei, director of The Paid Leave Project. “This new data is crucial to help employers better understand the decisions that will positively impact their workforce and business operations.”

Changes in the national labor force are accelerating paid leave decisions, according to the research. The emerging 21st century workforce, led by the millennial generation, values work-life balance even more than previous generations. Companies say the expectations of their millennial employees are driving them to consider adopting or expanding paid leave.

The influence of the technology industry, with typically generous paid leave programs, extends beyond its own sector and across the country as its benefits become widely known and expected. Companies cited this kind of employee pressure, as well as the positive benefits of being an industry leader, as top factors in their paid leave decisions.

While employers cited the cost of offering paid leave as a key concern, the complications of managing the benefit are proving to be just as much of a barrier, especially in low-profit-margin industries. The full research report includes in-depth interviews with companies that are paving the way in solving scheduling and other such workforce management challenges.

An overview of the complete research findings is available at The Paid Leave Project. The report builds on earlier work by The Paid Leave Project and the Boston Consulting Group, which in 2017 released Why Paid Family Leave Is Good Business, a summary report from initial research into the paid leave practices of more than 250 U.S. companies.

In 2018, The Paid Leave Project will focus its research on industry-specific dynamics, the challenges for companies in states with current or pending legislation, and how employers are tracking paid leave data, results, and return on investment.

On Dec. 22, 2017 the President signed the GOP-backed Tax Cuts and Jobs Act into law. While it’s most known for the sweeping tax cuts it’s aptly named for, the bill also includes a number of provisions, including a tax credit related to paid leave. This makes it the first paid leave measure at a national level.

Unlike other recently proposed paid leave bills this provision does not actually require employers to roll out paid leave to their workforce. Rather, starting this year, it will provide a tax credit to those employers that offer at least two weeks of leave and compensate their workers at a minimum of 50 percent of their regular earnings. To qualify for the credit employers must offer both full-time and part-time workers paid leave if they have been employed at the organization for at least a year. This overall effort can be viewed as a trial as it will end after 2019, unless extended by Congress.

For more on this, join Ernst & Young LLP professionals for a Jan. 31, 2018 webcast on important developments in employment-related federal business tax credits and what to watch for in 2018.

This is the most comprehensive article on paid leave we’ve seen in a long time.

Here are 10 story highlights – and why this news is so significant to American workers, business and the U.S. economy:

• Starbucks just announced it is expanding paid leave to hourly workers.
• This follows the same recent news by Walmart.
• These are two huge employers of U.S. workers = huge impact in terms of increasing U.S. workers’ access to paid leave. Walmart employs 1.5 million in the U.S. alone.
• Chart/ visual shows paid leave at about 20 of the U.S. largest companies.
• Most important takeaway in this news: 1) We are increasing access for hourly workers, not just corporate employees. This is huge progress for equality. 2) Let’s acknowledge the role of the new tax credit at play here. It’s a sign that the effects of low unemployment have reached companies that rely on low-wage workers. Both companies credited tax cuts. 3) This is particularly significant because the retail industry is traditionally known to have low profit margins, making it more challenging to offer extra employee benefits and supports. 4) The tipping point. Industries benchmark against competitors. This news will have a domino effect.
• “A corporate person having a child versus someone lower having a child, there’s no difference — that child still needs its parents,” said Paris Mendez, who loads trucks at a Walmart distribution center in Smyrna, Del.
• Paid leave is becoming a gender neutral conversation… men are caregivers too!
• And paid leave helps keep women in the workforce which is good for business and good for the U.S. economy.
• Americans are not ambivalent about whether paid leave helps workers. In a recent Pew Research Center survey, 94 percent said it would help families, and two-thirds said it would help the economy.
• Business leaders and decision makers are asking us to “show them the ROI of paid leave.” Here it is: Research has found that mothers who take paid parental leave are more likely to be working a year later, and less likely to receive public aid. It also improves mothers’ physical and mental health; the duration of breast-feeding; babies’ health and development; and gender equity. When fathers take such leave, research shows, they are more involved in their children’s lives years later; their children are healthier; and mothers have increased earnings and better mental health.

Find the full story here.